BackBet finally launched by ipoker

BackBet from ipoker is inplay betting on the outcome of your cash game hands. While new for ipoker, a more basic arcade game version called PokerBet was launched years ago by Micrograming but was not based on live hands and real players.

BackBet is the first to use real play and was intended to be released at the start of 2010 as ipokers ‘Hedge Hoc’. Why was BackBet never released in 2010 under its original name of Hedge Hoc?

ipokers BackBet allows you to bet on the outcome of cards to come or that will be dealt to you next time, when you are sitting on the special BackBet cash tables. You can bet on the cards to come in relation to your own hand or the cards to come after you have folded your hand. Microgaming skins have slowly abandoned their own version of BackBet and in its present format, if ipoker skins have to pay for it, BackBet may eventually go the same way.

Why was the original ipoker BackBet never released?

The original Hedge Hoc release info implied that the inplay betting would be live for all cash games and tournaments. This would offer some form of poker insurance betting. The Hedge Hoc info was sent out to sites who sent it to their affiliates and then something interesting happened.

Affiliates and players realised that this could offer poker hedge betting (insurance bets) options. If poker players could understand the implications of how this would revolutionize online poker then those players would make a fortune.

Some of them got together and created a few sites targeted at the release. And then …. nothing happened.

BackBet ipokers new betting game

A few sites noticed that they had a sudden spike in traffic from Isreal (where playtech/ipoker are based) and then then project appeared to die. The poker conspiracy theory conclusion they would like us to believe and have said goes like this. The players worked out what a game changing event live online insurance betting would be for poker cash games. They suggest that ipoker never worked out the full implications of what Hedge Hoc (BackBet) would do or could be done with it, until it was pointed out by these sites. Such poker betting strategies as reverse insurance betting.

BackBet ipoker - Hedge Hoc as it was orginally

Live betting with online cash games would mean instant insurance or hedging your bets. With the software calculating everything you would also get a clue as to what the real odds of outcomes happening were.

It was not going to be available for all ipoker skins, as each skin would have had to pay for the privilege of its players having the old BackBet software.

This meant that half of ipokers networks players would be able to destroy the other half, as they could take insurance bets not just on cash games but also poker tournaments. ipoker skin players who had the original BackBet software could push the edges as they had insurance.

BackBet is back

It could easily be true that BackBet was delayed due to technical issues and other priorities. The newer version of BackBet is more colourful so the delay may have been good. Although those who were involved and questioned ipoker about it, and have the original release information, are sure that no mention of it being restricted to only cash games and only cash games played on the special BackBet tables was ever made …

One of the poker conspiracy theories evidence is that the name change from Hedge Hoc to Backbet … But then Hedge Hoc was a very stupid name, although very clever how many people would fully understand what it meant. It did not even have the word bet in it!

So what does ipokers BackBet mean for regular online cash game players? We will discuss that in another article

About PenFold

Zak ‘PenFold’ Vella – Our expert of all things Maltese and Italian. One of the main people responsible for opening up the Italian market and bringing the joys of Enetpoker Network to the rest of the world. For which one day Zak will be knighted. Also known in the Content writing business as ‘Mr Google Translate’ as he can speak and write in more languages than it can.